Three Problems
by eternalstrigoii
Summary: Once upon a time, his fingers wrapped in hair soft as newly-turned earth. "You're mine," he said against her mouth. Hers wound in the collar of his shirt. She would've torn it open if he hadn't tilted her head back, bared her graceful throat and made her grin. There was blood on her teeth, and he loved her more than anything. "I'm yours, Victor. Always."


**Three Problems**

 _(Life And Death-verse Victor/Joss)_

She loved him for all that he was, not in spite of it; that was the first of their issues.

He was volatile and jealous – she _reveled_ in it. He should've never fallen for her – hindsight was twenty-twenty and he hadn't had the good judgment to cut her off when she was a fledgling fling. She'd always been in control; that was another. Try as he might to deter her, some of her quarries she chose purposefully to spite him. Once she set her mind to something, she saw it through, regardless of his supposed ownership of her. He never dulled her victory. There was nothing quite as attractive as her after-dinner swagger partnered with that defiant look of how she'd told him so. He was hateful, possessive, an all-devouring inferno of a man with a wild look in his eyes, and she loved it when his fingers twisted in her hair, when he only drew her closer to _growl_ that he would never let her leave him. (Everyone else had; nothing would've stopped her from doing the same unless he reminded her periodically. He would do as she did if she thought she could; he'd track her to the ends of the earth to have her back, and she kissed him every time he told her.) She saw no fault in it; she matched his violence with her own. Too many of their mutual kills were foreplay. She did what she wanted, dragged him along, brought him to the border of insanity, and made up for it. She never failed to make up for it.

That was the third problem, and perhaps the largest of all.

Joss was dead. There was no remedy for that.

The closest they'd come to domesticity was that time in the South. The weather had been unforgiving; it drove them into every abandoned house and storefront they could reach between waves. Usually, they didn't mind the rain; that might've been a hurricane. He couldn't remember, he could only remember the couple whose car stalled early in the storm, and that Joss made him wait in the shadows until they approached her. She'd taken the male, he the female. He'd crushed her pretty little neck like it was made of paper. She bled all over herself; Joss had the sense to take off the other guy's jacket first. He'd laid his clothes out to dry where the cross-wind blew, and she curled up in another man's coat and another woman's pants. It might've been the first time in a decade they rested. He could recall, vividly, the sight of her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed as though asleep, and his certainty. That woman was all he had.

She pretended very well that there was no humanity left in them. She'd never been able to resist being close, not in the rain, not in the sun, in the city or the wild. He loved her, and she let him, and every so often, she betrayed that she might've loved him too. At the very least, they'd been together for too long not to be fond of each other. They was too much between them. She only lost one kill to another vampire, and the poor bitch paid with her life. She'd called it _disgusting maternal instinct_. He thought that meant she wanted the kid for herself – for them.

That might've been why they made Lauren, in retrospect.

None of that mattered, now. He could smell the acrid sweetness, he felt the heat long before he saw the fire, and he did not care if Lauren waited to find out if they lived or died. A part of him hoped the fire meant she destroyed the vampires who'd given her a hard time. The rest _knew_. He'd gotten there too late; the fire was too large to safely enter. He had to wait until Scottsdale FD put it out. They didn't think anyone had been inside. They promised to investigate, and gave him just enough of a window to enter.

Seven of them, one of her; she never stood a chance.

There was a small part of him that wanted to believe she'd sent him away to keep him safe – seven of the yellow-eyes and two of them were not much better odds. It could've been three. They probably would've lost. He couldn't bring himself to blame Lauren; she was out for her self-preservation. If Joss had the sense, she would've given up too. If he had the sense, he never would've let her go alone. He would've never fallen in love at all.

There was nothing left of her, nothing physical. So he took a little part of her – what part, he didn't really care, but enough of her to carry with him. He lay against the rest and pretended it was her lap on that frost-laden Christmas Eve god knew how many years ago when they'd gorged themselves on that family out in the middle of nowhere and sat out across their porch while Lauren sacked the house. She'd run her fingers through his hair, and he'd kissed the still pulse inside her wrist. She didn't waste time on sentiment when action meant result, but her hands hesitated.

"I do love you, you know," she'd said in her voice that reminded him of moving water in the fall. "I'm not just saying it so you'll stop telling me to."

He'd kissed the inside of her elbow. "I know." He'd waited until it made her uncomfortable to add, as teasing then as he'd ever been. "I love you too, I don't know how you didn't know that."

She'd shoved him off her lap and went inside, and he'd laughed after her. They were so far from the rest of mankind that he would've had no problem seeing the stars with human eyes. Puffs of chimney smoke danced through them like clouds, and Joss sat on the stone hearth before the fire and put her feet up. Lauren brought them both new clothes, and layers, and cash. He took a trinket off one of the dying girls and draped it around her neck. Lauren kept the cash, and Joss kept the necklace until one of her quarries snapped the chain on the way down. He'd planned to get her something else.

The hardwood splintered under his hands, and every animal within a mile sounded like it lost its mind. Anyone close enough to hear the sound would've sworn they heard _something_ being murdered. It was only a man dying the most painful of his deaths; he'd lost the only thing that gave his life meaning. Who wouldn't die again after that?

He lay against her, and he did the closest thing to mourning he was capable of: he plotted their revenge.

Once upon a time, his fingers wrapped in hair soft as newly-turned earth. "You're mine," he said against her mouth. Hers wound in the collar of his shirt. She would've torn it open if he hadn't tilted her head back, bared her graceful throat and made her grin. There was blood on her teeth, and he loved her more than anything.

"I'm _yours_ , Victor. Always."

The fourth problem: that was not _enough_.


End file.
